


It's Worth It, I'm Worth It

by Gay_as_fuck



Series: How Not To Be Perfect (but how to be okay) [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Overdose, Recovery, Rehabilitation, drug overdose, drug rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 15:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gay_as_fuck/pseuds/Gay_as_fuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He might be getting better, but he's not perfect. Maybe that's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Worth It, I'm Worth It

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i needed to follow that first one up with something happy, so recovery and all that jazz

Jack wakes coughing up blood, it’s red and it stains his white bed sheets. The contrast isn’t the only thing that confuses him. He can’t remember how he ended up in this white covered room.

More aware of his surrounds he realized that there was something weighing on the other side of his bed. He turned over, and saw that it was his father laying there, fast asleep. He grimaced as he remembered the overdose. 

Cursing himself, he was an idiot, he turned away from his father. Looking at the old man made him sick, he’d messed up badly. He hoped his father would wake and forget about what had happened.

It was his fault. He’d been an idiot and now he’d ruined everything. He briefly wonders if his father’s sleeping form would never change. He doesn’t dare look back over to that side of the bed. 

\--

One of the few channels he’s not allowed to watch while in the hospital is the hockey one. They think it’ll be bad for him to watch them, that it’ll set something off. He wants to know what team Kent got onto, he wants to know that at least Kent got his dreams.

His father and he talk in clipped sentences, they never truly say what they want to. Jack wants to yell, to say that this is all his father’s fault, that if he didn’t have to be perfect then he wouldn’t have used.

He also knows that it’s not his father’s fault. So he bites his tongue and stays silent while in the hospital. He needs to be perfect again. His doctor pulls his meds, telling him that he can’t have any.

\--

They send him to rehab, and all the other kids there are fucked up. He’s not, he thinks, He’s the okay one. It’s not that he thinks less of them, in fact he thinks more of them. They’ve faced their demons and they’re surviving. 

He’s one of the oldest, and he doesn’t talk much. He says what he needs to and he tries to get better. They don’t let you watch much TV in rehab but they do have an older copy of Sports Illustrated at the bottom of a pile of magazines.

He takes a big black shapie they used in one workshop and crosses out his father’s face. He crosses out all the things that say his father is wonderful, all reference of his name. He doesn’t add anything instead, but it helps.

The next day he sees another kid reading it, and a few days after that he notices that in red marker it now says Jack Zimmermann in messy handwriting. 

He smiles for the first time since he got there. The red marking a change, something brand new.

\--

He spends the next summer with his father and hates himself a little more. It’s probably not good for him, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

His mother makes both of them dinner and pretends like nothing’s wrong, or just plays along with the two of them. It’s a summer of blue sky and white clouds that look like something out of a photograph.

They’re a photo of a perfect family, white shirts and white blouses. 

Jack tries to never wear white, he’s not gonna be perfect. He hates it, he wants to be perfect but he’d rather be a failure and be his own person. It’s better to fight to be a failure than to need to be perfect.

He used to need white and perfect, maybe he doesn’t anymore. He’d like to think he doesn’t, so when the school year starts to near and his father drops college brochures on his bed while he’s out he tosses them away.

All of his father’s school choices have white brochures, white and blue. White and blue are the colors of the juniors, and they’re not his good colors. He’ll cling to anything that means getting better.

When he sees the Samwell brochure his mother hands him all he sees is red. The next week he’s checking out their campus and a week after that arguing with his father.

In two weeks he’s at Samwell campus, his father’s disapproval clear.

\--

A kid who introduces himself as shitty, and swears it’s a nickname, becomes his best friend. He meets Jack by spilling his bathtub brew beer all over Jack, and when he looks over to see shitty he sees a bright red cup.

Shitty and him try out together, they both get in of course. The Samwell Jersey’s have white on them which makes dread pool in his stomach, but they have red as well. 

The night of the first hockey game, he smiles as shitty elbows him at a bad joke. He looks out into the crowd of students just like him and sees red.

They lose that night, but Shitty invites him over for bad beer and a soap opera marathon and though that night was far from perfect, he’s far from perfect, Jack smiles because he doesn’t need perfect.

He doesn’t know what he wants, but this might just be what he needs.


End file.
